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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

Miso Robotics Officially Opens Equity Crowdfunding Campaign to Raise $30M

Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy, the burger grilling, tater tot frying robot, announced today that it is kicking off its equity crowdfunding campaign to raise a $30 million Series C round.

Equity crowdfunding eschews traditional institutional funding such as venture capital and allows everyday people to invest directly in a company. In the case of Miso, a minimum investment of $1,493 per investor is required in order to participate. (And we should interject that any investment is a risk and this post is not an endorsement of Miso.)

Miso announced the equity crowdfunding campaign back in November, but it still required SEC approval before it could officially begin. According to the press announcement emailed to us, Miso says it has already secured $2.6 million in reservations with a pre-money valuation of $80 million.

Earlier this year, Miso introduced its newest generation of Flippy, the ROAR, which has the robot suspended on rails above a cooking space to make more room for any human co-workers.

This jump into equity crowdfunding comes at an interesting time, to say the least. The world is in the throes of a global pandemic that is costing millions of jobs, has sent the stock market reeling and is creating even new levels of uncertainty. How many everyday people impacted by COVID-19 are going to have the money to plunk down at minimum of $1,500 to own a small part of a robot company?

Not to mention the fact that a big driver of food automation in restaurants was a labor crunch. With an estimated 3 percent of US restaurants permanently closed, there will be a lot of human workers suddenly available once this pandemic passes.

On the other hand, the coronavirus outbreak and fear of human-to-human transmission of the virus is sparking all kinds of change throughout the food system. In a post-corona world, robots that prepare food could be seen as a way to make restaurants more hygienic. This, in turn, could spark a boom in food robotics.

Equity crowdfunding has become a bit of a trend in the food tech world. Other companies like Winc, Small Robot Company, GOffee and GoSun have all turned to the everyday investor for their latest rounds of funding. On one level, it provides them with the flexibility to grow as they like without added pressure from scale-seeking VCs, but it also denies companies the networks and knowledge VCs can provide.

Miso has made its choice, and now we’ll see if everyday investors flip for Flippy the robot.

Starship Robots Deliver Food Over Social Distances at Bowling Green

There is probably some grim metaphor in the fact that while people across the US shelter in place to avoid human contact, robots continue to roll out, making deliveries, unaware of the pandemic that surrounds them.

Ever since this outbreak started, we at The Spoon have wondered why autonomous delivery robots aren’t being used more often, especially in cities. As grocery and restaurant deliveries surge, robots could remove at least one human from the delivery equation (and they are a lot easier to scrub down after each use).

Turns out that Bowling Green State University is still using Starship robots for food delivery on campus, according to the Sentinel-Tribune. At least Jon Zachrich, Bowling Green State University Dining Director of Marketing and Communications, thinks that’s a good thing in these end times.

“I personally think it’s a good opportunity for social distancing, just because your only interaction is going to be with the actual robot, once it comes from our facility,” Zachrich told the Sentinel-Tribune.

He also spilled some factoids that I, as someone who follows the robot space, found interesting. The surface of the robot is non-porous, so it’s easy to clean. Zachrich also outlined some of the sanitizing protocols for the robot, saying that each robot is wiped down with disinfectant and anti-bacterial cleaners after each use.

On a more general interest note, Zachrich also gave us a glimpse as to how many orders the robots were running at Bowling Green before the pandemic. The robots debuted on campus on Feb. 20 and “Orders were quickly maxed out at over 750 per day,” the Sentinel-Tribune writes. Each of those came with $1.99 Starship delivery fee if you want to do the math on revenue generation.

That number has obviously dropped off as Bowling Green, like so many other colleges, has shifted to distance learning. Most restaurants on campus have closed, but the restaurants are still delivering to essential staff on campus and students who remained because they don’t have any other place to go.

This outbreak doesn’t seem to be subsiding anytime soon, especially in this country. With social distancing becoming the new norm, at least for the foreseeable future, perhaps more places will be like Bowling Green and get their own robots rolling across the social distance gap.

Amazon Selling its “Just Walk Out” Cashierless Tech to Other Retailers

Amazon is now selling the cashierless technology used in its Go stores to other retailers, Reuters reports. The business line is called “Just Walk Out,” and Amazon says it has already signed up several customers for the service.

The Just Walk Out technology is being used at a number of Amazon Go convenience stores across the country and the just-launched, larger Go Grocery store in Seattle. Using a combination of computer vision, shelf sensors and deep learning, Just Walk Out allows shoppers to do just that — grab an item and walk out, getting charged automatically upon exit.

There is one big difference in the way this technology is being offered to other retailers. Unlike Go stores, where you scan the Amazon Go app on your phone in order to enter a store, Just Walk Out for third party retailers will require shoppers to insert their credit card into a (Amazon branded) turnstile as they enter. The technology still monitors your shopping the same way, it would at an Amazon Go store, but if you need a receipt, there will be a kiosk for you to associate an email with that credit card.

As Reuters points out, this type of setup does bring up the question of who owns the customer data. If customers are handing over their email address, what type of relationship is it entering into with Amazon? Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology told Reuters that Amazon saves the email and credit card information only for the purpose of charging the customer.

But that still leaves a ton of data around when customers shop, how often, what times, what they pick up in stores and what they put back, etc.. That’s a treasure trove of information that Amazon could use to feed its own algorithms and apply to its own real world retail game.

The actual news today isn’t actually that big of a surprise for industry watchers. CNBC reported last year that Amazon was looking to sell its cashierless tech to third parties to places like movie theaters.

But the big question is who will adopt this. It’s unlikely that grocery retailers like Albertsons or Kroger would be interested. They are already locked in a heated battle with Amazon as the e-commerce giant rolls out physical stores like the aforementioned Go Grocery, and its forthcoming chain of full-on supermarkets in Los Angeles. So there’s no real incentive to hand Amazon more money.

Plus, there are a lot of options for retailers looking to add cashierless checkout to their retail experiences. Trigo, Grabango, AiFi, Caper, and Zippin all offer cashierless solutions that either retrofit existing stores, or extend their brand with smaller, self-contained, standalone cashierless retail experiences.

Having said that, in many ways, Amazon could be for cashierless tech was IBM was for computing technology in the past. The saying used to go “no one gets fired for buying IBM,” and with Amazon’s size and track record, the Bezos behemoth could be the safe choice for smaller retailers to up their high-tech offerings.

Dexai Robotics Raises $5.5M for its Robot Sous Chef (That Can Scoop Ice Cream)

Dexai Robotics has raised a $5.5 million seed round for its robotic arm sous chef, the company announced yesterday. The round was led by Hyperplane Venture Capital with new investors Rho Capital, Harlem Capital, Contour Venture Partners, and NextView Ventures also participating.

Dubbed “Alfred,” Dexai’s robotic arm is meant to be a flexible food prep assistant that can work in various kitchen scenarios. The company says it can work with a restaurant’s existing set up, utensils and recipes to do things like assemble sandwiches, salads, and even scoop ice cream.

Alfred came about as a result of artificial intelligence for robotics research conducted in collaboration between MIT and Harvard. According to the press announcement, that research led to the software breakthrough that allowed Alfred to control “deformable materials” like ice cream, sushi-grade tuna, pico de gallo, etc.

Dexai was actually among the companies in our Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase, back in 2018. You can see the company’s brief pitch here.

SKS 2018 Startup Showcase: Dexai Robotics

With some QSRs reporting worker turnover rates as high as 150 percent, food robots and automation are one solution to the labor shortage restaurants are facing. Robots can work around the clock without a break and can take over repetitive, sometimes dangerous work in the kitchen, allowing humans to focus more on customer service.

Dexai is among a cohort of startups applying robotics to the kitchen. Miso Robotics‘ Flippy can grill burgers and fry foods, and Picnic’s modular robots can assemble 300 pizzas in an hour.

Dexai says that it will use this round of funding to expand its engineering, sales and product teams with the goal of serving new and different types of cuisines and scaling up.

Basil Street Raises $10 Million for its Pizza Vending Machines

Basil Street announced today that it has raised a $10 million round of funding that will help the company begin a multi-city pilot of its pizza vending machines starting this April.

Basil Street’s machines are roughly 20 square feet in size and hold up to 150 10-inch, thin-crust pizzas. The machine serves cheese and pepperoni pies as well as a rotating “Pizza of the month,” each costing between $6.95 and $11.95. Pizzas are made fresh, flash frozen for storage in the machine, and reheated using a patent-pending, non-microwave speed oven that cooks the pies in about three minutes.

Like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is targeting high-volume, high-traffic areas such as airports, military bases, hospitals, college campuses or even inside existing locations like supermarkets.

And also like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is part of a wave of high-tech, haute cuisine automated food kiosks coming to market. Other players — Yo-Kai Express with its hot ramen, Chowbotics with its fresh salads, and Bake Xpress with its pastries (and pizza!) — are all vying to revolutionize what a vending machine is capable of.

But for Basil Street, selling pizza is just part of the equation and really just the start for the company. As we wrote last year, all the machines are IoT-enabled, so the company will have a ton of data to work with:

The company will know what people buy, when and where they buy it, and how often. Basil Street could use this data to target new cuisine offerings or new locations. The company started with pizza because it’s easier to ship and cook, but [Basil Street Cafe CEO, Deglin] Kenealy said the oven’s technology could be used to cook just about anything.

But first, Basil Street has to get its machines up and going, which it will do with this cash infusion (the company had previously raised $3.5 million in family and friends funding). Basil Street will be targeting Texas, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina and Southern California for its first roll-outs.

Newsletter: So How the Heck Do We Deliver on The Promise of Food Personalization?

People have always wanted personalization in their products and services. That much was said multiple times last week at Customize, The Spoon’s daylong summit on food personalization. Event attendees and panelists alike also agreed that technology has increased our expectations around what personalization can even be when it comes to our food. Getting your name on a Coke bottle was once the extent of customized eats and drinks. Now we have software that analyzes our microbiome to tell us which foods are best for our unique bodies and restaurant systems that promise McDonald’s will never forget that I hate yellow mustard.

The promise of personalization was discussed in other areas of the food industry during the event, too. Companies like Kroger are using it to fill “food prescriptions” in the grocery store for diabetes patients. Digital kitchen platform Yummly wants to personalize your recipes, shopping lists, pantry, and, well, pretty much your entire kitchen and home cooking experience. 

The question is, How on earth are we supposed to deliver on all this promise? It’s one thing to talk onstage about the benefits of microbiome-based eating or reinventing the restaurant loyalty program. It’s quite another to convince the mainstream these operations actually do what they say, are based on sound science, and, most important, responsibly handle all that user data required to create truly personalized experiences. 

Are we there yet? No. The next steps for food personalization need to be around investing in the infrastructure to scale these technologies and, for investors, funding the kinds of companies that treat both users and their data with the utmost respect. These are the kinds of conversations we can expect to have more of as personalization evolves from buzzword to actual practice and we start to separate hype from reality.

The Latest Coronavirus Victim? Trade Shows

Had Customize been scheduled to take place this week rather than last, it’s quite possible the event wouldn’t have happened at all. Trade shows left and right are now getting canceled due to concerns over the widespread coronavirus outbreak. 

The Spoon’s publisher Mike Wolf has been keeping up with the closures. Yesterday, he reported that the Inspired Home Show had been canceled. “It’s an extraordinary move to cancel a trade show less than two weeks before it opens, but it’s an illustration of how fluid and fast-moving the situation is around the coronavirus,” he wrote.

Even more extraordinary? Postponing a show the day before it officially starts, which is what the Natural Products Expo West just had to do last night.

These are likely just the start of trade show cancellations and postponements. There are dozens of food industry events, both in the U.S. and overseas, slated for the next few months. As the number of coronavirus cases worldwide grows, and with it concerns from both conference-goers and organizers, more shows will likely be affected by the outbreak.

We’re in the Golden Age of Meat Vending Machines

Let’s end this thing on a brighter note.

My colleague Chris Albrecht got a tip this week about an automated vending machine in South Korea called Meatbox 365. Users can choose from a range of meats in a variety of cuts, using a touchscreen to select their choices. As Chris wrote, “Meatbox 365 is basically a 24-hour butcher shrunk down into a very small physical footprint.” 

The machine is currently getting a lot of press because it’s the kind of automated, unmanned machine cities and countries greatly affected by coronavirus need in order to keep crowds out of places like supermarkets. It’s also the kind of high-tech vending machine that could be the perfect testing ground for personalization. Someday, the Meatbox 365 or a similar machine will automatically know which cut of beef I like, and what kind of meat I should be eating in the first place (if plant-based beef hasn’t taken over by then).

Just hold the yellow mustard, please.

Stay sane,

Jenn

West Hollywood Approves Delivery ‘Bots, Missouri Mulls its Own Robot Regs

In addition to random celebrity sightings, residents of West Hollywood, CA will soon be spotting autonomous delivery robots in their neighborhood. Last night the West Hollywood city council approved the use of delivery robots on its city streets (hat tip to WeHoVille).

A trial of the program will start next month with Postmates’ Serve robot and run for 90 days. Serve is a cooler-sized robot that scurries around on four wheels, and while it can run autonomously using sensors and cameras to avoid people and obstacles, the city council is requiring a human chaperone during the trial. Additionally, only three robots can be in operation at once, they can only run during the day, and they aren’t allowed on sidewalks deemed substandard.

Serve has already been making deliveries in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles since the tail end of last year, and the West Hollywood expansion illustrates how cautious local regulators are being when it comes to robots.

Across the country from West Hollywood, state lawmakers in Missouri introduced their own bill to regulate sidewalk delivery robots. The proposed legislation would limit a robot’s weight to 200 lbs, have autonomous driving capabilities, and require an insurance policy of $100,000 to cover any damages.

State and local governments across the country are grappling with rapid innovation like sidewalk robots essentially in real time. Lawmakers have to weigh the convenience of something like an autonomous sidewalk robot with the costs. Sidewalk robots could help reduce traffic congestion by getting delivery cars off the road, but then you have fleets of ‘bots crowding sidewalks. Robots could make meal delivery more affordable, but you have to make sure they are distributed in an equitable fashion. Then there are questions around liability and privacy when running robots on public streets, and more fundamental questions like where robots can recharge.

The point is, autonomous robot delivery technology is available and ready, now we just to wait and see how it will be integrated into our everyday lives.

Udelv Offers its Driverless Delivery Vans to Assist with Coronavirus Efforts

If there is anything “lucky” about the deadly coronavirus outbreak marching its way across the world, it could be the timing. At at time when human-to-human interactions, especially in quarantined areas, need to be limited, we actually live in a world where driverless delivery vehicles and robots aren’t science fiction, but could actually be a viable means to supply delivery.

In Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus which is currently on lockdown, online grocery shopping has been a lifeline for those forced to stay home. Even here in the U.S. where no large-scale quarantines are in place, the New York-based online grocer FreshDirect has attributed a spike in sales to media coverage around COVID-19.

But in both of those scenarios, you still have human drivers bringing food to human customers. In China, they’ve implemented a contactless method for delivery wherein the delivery person and the consumer remain ten feet apart from each other, but there is still a human putting themselves at risk to feed another human.

Given that there are a host of startups working on self-driving delivery technology, we at The Spoon were wondering if and when any of them would raise their hand to help out in the efforts to combat the effects of the coronavirus.

Today, Udelv, which makes self-driving and tele-operated delivery vans, made such a move, and on Twitter announced that it was ready to pitch in.

At first, this may seem like some mercenary Silicon Valley grab for press attention amidst a humanitarian crisis. But two things can be true at the same time.

To find out more about Udelv’s intentions, I spoke with its CEO, Daniel Laury, by phone today. He explained that his company’s delivery trucks could be useful in quarantine situations such as the one in Wuhan because they can be tele-operated. There is still someone driving the delivery van, they are just housed in a remote location. Vans could be sent in to deliver food, medicine or other supplies without putting a human driver at risk.

Additionally, Udelv trucks are built with customizable individual cargo compartments. Each order has its own delivery cubby that is unlocked with user’s phone when it arrives. So a grocery route could have multiple stops with people only able to access their own orders.

Asked if he would charge for the use of Udelv’s services, Laury told me “This is done with the best intention. I’m not charging. I’m not going to make money on this.”

In talking with him, it seemed like Laury saw what was going on and saw that his company might be able to help. He hasn’t worked through all of the details yet; for example, rules around autonomous vehicles on public roads have only recently been enacted here in the US, though I imagine there could exceptions made for extreme quarantine situations. And Laury doesn’t have a particular sanitization workflow in mind. It’s one thing to not have a human driver, but if you have an infected person touching or coughing at the inside of a cargo hold, that cargo hold will need some kind of scrub down.

“We’re expert in autonomous trucking, not viruses,” Laury told me. He considers Udelv’s truck just another tool that could be used to help fight the outbreak. Udelv would provide vans to a government agency like the CDC, and they would institute proper sterilization procedures. His company would just make sure supplies gets from point A to B.

So far Udelv has not been contacted by any government agencies either at home or abroad. Udelv doesn’t even operate in China, but Laury said he’s happy to put some vans on a boat if they want. “I don’t know anyone at the CDC or the administration that I can contact directly,” Laury said. “It’s one of the reasons I put out this tweet. Maybe it’s picked up by someone who is in charge.”

If someone in charge is reading, perhaps you can take look at how autonomous vehicles might be able to help.

LG and Woowa Bros. to Develop Food Delivery and Serving Robots

South Korean companies LG and Woowa Brothers announced today that they will work together on developing robots that deliver food to tables at restaurants as well as to your front door (hat tip to The Investor).

The companies didn’t provide many specifics, just saying that there were synergies between the two and they looked forward to making a better world where robots and humans coexist.

The move isn’t surprising given that both companies have made numerous robotic moves in parallel up to this point. Just earlier this month South Korean restaurant chain CJ Foodville started deploying LG’s CLoi ServeBots at its locations to serve food and shuttle empty dishes.

For its part Woowa Brothers, which operates Baedal Minjok, South Korea’s largest food delivery operation, launched a robot rental program for restaurants in November of last year. And last summer, Woowa partnered with UCLA to develop cooking robots. Woowa was acquired by Delivery Hero for $4 billion last December, but prior to that, Woowa’s CEO had talked openly about how delivery robots should be multi-taskers and do things like take away trash and recycling.

The announcement comes amid the backdrop of the deadly coronavirus. Cases in South Korea have spiked, and as the disease becomes a global pandemic, robots are one measure being taken to reduce human-to-human contact. As we saw early in the virus’ spread, a quarantined hotel in China used robots to serve food to stranded travelers. In fact, robots could wind up being instrumental in the contactless method of food delivery, if proper sterilization procedures can be put into place.

LG certainly isn’t alone in its food robot endeavors. Sony has a big vision for cooking robots and partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to research them. Sony also recently launched a dedicated artificial intelligence unit that would work on “gastronomy.”

All of this is to say that with the intense focus from companies like LG, Woowa, Sony and more, the world of food delivery and restaurant robots is being primed to undergo massive advancements in the coming years.

Report: Amazon’s Grocery Store Will Have Robotic Fulfillment

When Bloomberg surfaced a report last week giving us a first-look inside Amazon’s new grocery store, we were struck by how conventional it was, especially when it came to automation and robotics. But a report from the HNGRY blog this week says that actually, the Amazon grocery store will have robot-powered micro-fulfillment.

From HNGRY’s story:

HNGRY has now confirmed that Amazon is working with Dematic to provide this very technology inside of its new stores, which will ultimately enable faster than average last-mile delivery and in-store pickup. The company has carefully designed this 7,200 sqft area to house room-temperature robotic-picked storage aisles that will house everything from alcohol to packaged food, occupying about 21% of its 33,574 sqft total footprint.

If HNGRY’s reporting is accurate, this actually makes more sense than Bloomberg’s report in a lot of ways. First, Amazon loves robots. It bought robotics company Kiva Systems a long time ago for automating Amazon warehouses. And Amazon is building a big new, dedicated robotics center near Boston.

But it also makes sense from a competitive standpoint. Automated order fulfillment can translate into faster turnaround for grocery pickup or delivery. Already, Walmart is working with Alert Innovation on robot micro-fulfillment, and Albertsons has partnered with Takeoff Technologies.

It would be highly unlikely that Amazon, which prizes speed and efficiency above all else, would cede this type of advantage to its competitors. Amazon offers two-hour delivery for Prime members and waived the delivery fee for Prime members towards the end of last year.

Amazon is also seeing growth in its grocery delivery business. In its most recent earnings report, Amazon said that delivery orders from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods doubled year-over-year in Q4 of 2019.

HNGRY’s report is reassuring, in a way. I was worried Amazon’s supermarket was shaping up to be a bit of a bore. But it’s likely the company still has a few more technological surprises in store.

Chowbotics Looks Beyond Robot Salads and Into the Grocery Store Game

Here at The Spoon, we are big fans of breakfast cereal. We’ve written stories about it, and even devoted an entire podcast to it. So when we learned that Chowbotics, maker of the Sally the salad making robot, was looking to expand into cereal, well we just had to give them a call to learn more.

For those not familiar, Chowbotics’ Sally robot is a self-contained robotic vending machine that serves up salads and other bowls of fresh food like grains and yogurts. There are currently more than 100 Sally robots installed in different hospitals, college campuses and other locations across the country.

Chowbotics CEO Rick Wilmer told me by phone today that his company is looking to broaden its appeal by partnering with CPG brands like cereal companies. Wilmer envisions a scenario where shoppers, faced with a wall of different cereals in a grocery store, can sample cereals via a Chowbotics robot (complete with cold milk!).

This is an interesting direction and could turn the idea of Chowbotics on its head. Right now, Chowbotics locates Sallys in high-traffic areas that lack fresh food options. For establishments like hospitals that operate 24 hours a day, Sally becomes the only fresh food choice available since cafeterias and shops close down. In contrast, supermarkets are filled with fresh food choices.

Sally, then, could become more of a branding tool for CPG companies (like those that make cereal) and less of a mini-restaurant. This, in turn, changes the economics of Sally, which is typically bought or leased by the location. Instead of generating revenue by selling bowls, cereal samples (or whatever) would be subsidized, presumably by the CPG company itself.

It’s basically automating the in-store sample system. Instead of a person with a tray of a new-flavored Oreos or manchego cheese, the robot could dispense them either straight as a sample or as part of a larger recipe of ingredients to showcase how that food could be used at home.

This versatility seems to be one area where Sally has an advantage over other fresh food vending services like Farmers Fridge and Fresh Bowl, both of which serve food in closed jars. Sally can hold up to 22 different ingredients that could be swapped out and reprogrammed to make a variety of different meals out of those ingredients — not just pre-packaged salads.

Having said all that, it’s important to note that right now these are just ambitions for Chowbotics. They still have a lot of work do to convince grocery retailers and big brands to hop on its robotic bandwagon. But it shows that Chowbotics is thinking way bigger than salads. And if they get big cereals on board, we at The Spoon are happy to test out a bowl or two.

Yo-Kai Express Opens up its Automated Hot Ramen Machine at SFO

Yo-Kai Express, which makes hot ramen vending machines, opened up its first airport location last week at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

The SFO Twitter account posted a picture of the machine yesterday, and Andy Lin, CEO of Yo-Kai, confirmed to us via Linkedin that the machine went live last week. It’s located in Terminal 3, near gate E4, and from the looks of the picture, it’s right next to the Cafe X robot-barista (more on that in a minute).

Yo-Kai Express is a self-contained machine that serves up bowls of hot ramen noodles in about 45 seconds. The recipes for the ramen were developed by a Michelin-star chef (they are delicious), and they are stored frozen inside the machine. When you order on the touchscreen, a proprietary process re-heats the ramen and serves it up, complete with utensils.

From the SFO picture, this seems to be the latest version of the Yo-Kai machine, which features dual dispensers. Yo-Kai added this second delivery slot to reduce wait times for customers.

Yo-Kai is part of the emerging cohort of high-end vending machines, which also includes Chowbotics, Bake Xpress, Briggo and Cafe X. These companies are re-imagining what a vending machine can be, serving up fresh food at all hours of the day.

As mentioned earlier, it looks as though this new Yo-Kai is parked right next to the Cafe X at SFO. The two were actually neighbors in downtown San Francisco at the Metreon, before Cafe X shuttered its in-city locations.

But this type of food+drink placement is exactly what I wrote about a couple of weeks back. Because automated vending machines and kiosks have a smaller physical footprint, you can create a 24-hour, mini-food court in smaller corners an airport or hospital or any high-traffic location. Yo-Kai and Cafe X should be talking with one another to do cross-promotions (buy a bowl of ramen, get a coupon for an ice tea!).

These high-end vending machines will probably have a slight adoption curve at first as people get used to the idea of fresh food coming from an automated machine. People are more used to getting a Twix bar from a vending machine than a craft latte or Black Garlic Oil Tonkotsu Ramen. But that will change and soon there will be all types of cuisine waiting for us as we wait for our planes.